It’s Time to Next Level Your Content

We all know that content is important. But just how important is it? I mean, really, it can’t be that big of a deal. Right?

Wrong.

One of my clients recently ran an experiment on their website. They went from posting occasionally on their blog to posting as much as 20 posts per week. They ran this experiment for two months.

What they saw threw even me for a loop. They received an increase of 10 DA points. For those of you who monitor factors like domain authority, you know this is huge.

So today I’m going to be talking about content and how you can take yours to the next level.

Know Your Audience

What’s most important with your content strategy is to know your audience.If you haven’t done so, you need to come up with buyer personas for your product or service. You can read more about them on this website.

Once you have your buyer personas developed, you need to write content with those personas in mind. Then, you need to break your content strategy down even further.

You need to think about where they are in the sales funnel. So you should be writing content that hits persona number one at points A, C, and D. Persona number two should look at content at points A, D, and E.

Ideally, you want content that hits all of your personas individually at each point, although this will cause some overlap in content and may not be necessary.

Dot and Cross Everything

The biggest concern with increasing the amount of content on your website is going to be quality.

If quality is a concern, meaning you only have one writer, then less is more.

However, I recommend hiring more writers or outsourcing to independent contractors. Freelance writers are everywhere these days and freelancers, in general, are going to make up the majority of the workforce within the next ten years. So use them and use them efficiently.

Spend your company dollars on a legitimate and experienced editor and content manager. This can be one person or two, it doesn’t matter. But you need to be really clear about your expectations.
Your content needs to be stellar. If you can get 20 posts a week on your site and it’s all baller, then absolutely go for it.

But there is more to just creating amazing content as well. It should all be SEO friendly. If not, then what’s the point? A blog needs to please readers as well as search engines.

This includes eye candy like gifs, YouTube videos, and images. It also includes internal and external linking. Your blog is your hub and you should treat it like one. Make sure you can funnel repeat customers and prospects to where they need to go. And where they need to go is where you want them to go. Take control of your content and what it can do.

Promote Your Face Off

I recently read a piece of content about how Nerd Wallet has really gone above and beyond with their SEO strategies. A big part of what they do involves creating content that’s so awesome that everyone wants to link to it, including their competitors.

But another big part of what they do is really slick. In the content I read, they referred to it as “ego bait”.

So what Nerd Wallet will do is create a really amazing piece of content called something like, “The Best Cities/States to Live in for X”. Then, they get in touch with the webmasters of the city or state webmasters and give them a cute little badge. It’s an award, essentially. Like hey guys, thanks for being awesome. These badges have a link going back to Nerd Wallet.

A lot of websites try this strategy but none have had the success that Nerd Wallet does, because they aren’t stroking the ego like Nerd Wallet does.

If you don’t want to give out silly badges, then don’t. That’s not even the point. The point is that they created content and then promoted it by letting important people and websites know about the content. Links from a .gov site are the creme de la creme of link building.

And all Nerd Wallet did was write content and then tell people about it.

Don’t let the magic stop there. Promote on every channel that is relevant to your company. While there are major channels like Twitter and Instagram, you may also want to take a look at some of the smaller, more niche networks as well.

This includes being a part of forum communities and any other online avenue where prospects and customers may gather.

What is the Point?

Customers and prospects care why you do what you do? Your content is a great way to help show and explain to them why your company exists.

It can show them how it helps them with a problem.

Sometimes prospects have no idea they had a particular problem that your product or service can solve. It’s your job to put yourself out there and show the world what you, your company, and what you offer can do. And you can do it without being overly salesy and pushy.

The Takeaway

When you’re producing content, it can make you feel like you aren’t in control of your own business.

You can’t look at it this way. You should be thinking of how you can help people. And how your content can provide value to people who don’t yet know you exist.

If you want to have a profitable business, you have to put your customer’s needs ahead of your own.